Looking forward to Apple’s forward-looking statements

Wall Street is always looking ahead. When Apple reports its earnings Tuesday for the December quarter, investors will be listening as closely — if not more so — to the guidance the company gives for March.

So we asked our panel of analysts Sunday what they thought Apple’s revenue and gross margin guidance might be tomorrow.

We got two kinds of answers.

Most of the amateurs gave ranges — which is what Apple’s been offering since Oct. 2013.

Most of the pros gave us the Q2 numbers in their models, which is not at all the same thing.

Still, that’s what we’ve got. It may explain why the revenue numbers from the 13 analysts we heard from overnight — 8 pros and 5 amateurs — are lower than Thomson Financial’s 40 professional analysts. The latter are expecting revenues of $53.71 billion according to Yahoo Finance. The analysts we’ve heard from so far are looking for revenues of $53.11 billion and gross margins of 38.7%.